Vhoto for iPhone Magically Unearths Interesting Still Photos from Videos

There are some pretty awesome photos hidden in those videos you take often with your iPhone. There have been apps like StillShot which helps you dissect the video frame-by-frame, and choose that single frame which captures the moment perfectly and convert it into a photo. But that’s still a lot of work. Enter Vhoto, a new iPhone app that uses computer vision technology to intelligently scan videos you’ve taken to find the best photographic moments.

There must have been times where you’d be confused about choosing either the video mode or photo mode while waiting for a special moment. Each mode has its own advantages and disadvantages. What Vhoto does is to get rid of that confusion. Noah Heller and Hugh Crean imagined a better way to get photos — just shoot video the entire time and let technology do the rest to find the best shots.

The USP of Vhoto is its algorithm. Vhoto scans through your video at first and its algorithm then magically picks out the best moments which are worthy to be saved as photos. According to Heller, their basic idea is that there is an atomic unit to video, that there is a single moment or moments in a video that describes just what the video is about.

With Vhoto, you can either shoot directly from the app or choose one of the existing videos from your camera roll. The UI is simple and straight-forward. It doesn’t convince the users with multitude of controls and options. In fact the whole process is intuitive and fun, which is exactly how apps like Vhoto should be. But then, it does take some time to process the video, so don’t hold your breath while using it.

The app comes with some basic editing tools and filters, in case you want to fix up the shot. It also comes with social sharing shortcuts as you’d expect. It’s free to download and use right now, and is optimized for the iPhone 5 and runs on iOS 7.

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